1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method, and more particularly to those suitable for optimal layout of different amount of contents on a client-by-client basis.
2. Description of the Related Art
One-to-One marketing is a kind of database marketing in which personal attribute information relating to a client such as age, sex, hobby, preference, and buying history is managed by a database. Further, the information is analyzed to recognize the client needs and to provide accurate suggestions suitable to the client. A typical example of One-to-One marketing is variable print.
Along with recent developments in desktop publishing (DTP) technique and widespread use of digital printers, a variable print system for customizing documents on a client basis and outputting the customized documents has been developed. Under such circumstances, there is an increasing demand to optimize layout of different amounts of contents on a client basis.
The variable print system is realized by designing layout of containers on a document template and associating a database with the layout. However, a text container size and an image container size are fixed. Thus, in the case of inserting data from the database into a container, if a data amount exceeds a container size, there arises a problem of overlapping of the text and clipping of the image. Further, a smaller data amount compared with the container size leads to a problem of forming an unnecessary space on the image.
To solve the above problems, an automatic layout system has been proposed. The automatic layout system can set a text container size and an image container size as variables. In the automatic layout system, a container size is changed according to an amount of data to be inserted.
Further, in handling text data, when text data that cannot be fit into a container of fixed size is inserted into that container, a font size of the text data is reduced to display all the text data in the container.
However, if a size of a container is enlarged, the container can overlap with another container on the same document. Further, in the case of adjusting a font size, when a large amount of text data is inserted, the font size is reduced to be too small to recognize.
Another example of the automatic layout technique, which has been developed to overcome these problems, is discussed in a “layout design apparatus” of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-129658. According to this technique, if a size of any container becomes larger, a size of an adjacent container is reduced.
Further, a template switching technique as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-48533 prepares a plurality of templates in order to further extend possible representation of the automatic layout. Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-48533 describes a method of selecting a target template from a plurality of templates in accordance with conditions of data to be input, and inserting the data into the selected template.
However, the above described conventional technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-48533 requires preparing of a plurality of templates, and template generating processing is burdensome to a user.
For example, assuming that vertically long image data is input, a user needs to prepare a template for vertically long image data. Assuming that horizontally long data is input, the user needs to prepare a template for horizontally long data. In particular, the above conventional variable print fails to respond well to situations where there are many types of input data. For example, to prepare a plurality of types of templates corresponding to all the types of input data, which in some possible situations may range from several thousand to several hundreds of thousands of types, in advance would impose a huge burden on a user.